Poetry Reading | Red Hen Press Reading

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Brendan Constantine was born in 1967, the second child of two working actors. An ardent supporter of Southern California’s poetry communities and one of its most recognized poets, he has served as a teacher of poetry in local schools and colleges for the last seventeen years. His work has appeared in numerous journals, most notably Ploughshares, The Cortland Review, RUNES, and LA Times Bestseller The Underground Guide to Los Angeles. He released his first collection, Letters to Guns, in 2009 (Red Hen Press). He is currently poet-in-residence at the Windward School in West Los Angeles and Loyola Marymount University Extension. He is also currently working with The Alzheimer’s Poetry Project, bringing poetry workshops to Alzheimer’s patients throughout the southland. He holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in Hollywood at Bela Lugosi’s last address. Red Hen Press will release his third collection, Calamity Joe, in March 2012.

Lynnell Edwards is the author of three collections of poetry, Covet (2012), The Highwayman’s Wife (2007), and The Farmer’s Daughter (2003), all from Red Hen Press. Her book reviews and short fiction have been published nationally in such journals as Pleiades, The Hollins Critic, Connecticut Review, American Book Review, and New Madrid. She is Associate Professor of English at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. She also writes a books column for Louisville Magazine and is Board member of InKY, inc., sponsor of the monthly literary reading series InKY, which she co-produces.

Lillian-Yvonne Bertram has been a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference work-study scholar, a writer-in-residence at the Montana Artists Refuge, and is a Cave Canem alumna. Her poetry has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Callaloo, Harvard Review, Subtropics, and other journals. She received first place in the 2011 Summer Literary Seminars poetry contest, won the Gulf Coast Magazine Donald Barthelme Prize for Short Prose, and received second place in Narrative Magazine’s poetry contest. Bertram is a graduate of the writing programs at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was a Gaius Charles Bolin Fellow at Williams College, where she taught creative writing and literature. Her first book, But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise, won the 2010 Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award, judged by Claudia Rankine. It will be released by Red Hen Press in March 2012.